Diary of a residency…

so i was kept very busy last term what with printing collagraphs with year 9 and monoprints with year 7, i also spent time with year 11 working with a few who really wanted to explore print, helping them develop their course work, they’ve done some fantastic work and hopefully i’ll see more of them before i leave although they all seem to have disappeared to do mock exams…

last term we had a student teacher come and work in the art department- Louise.

It was a really great injection of energy as she was trying lots of new things out and was really keen to collaborate with me.

She was a ceramicist and really interested in print so we spent lots of time discussing combining print and ceramics. Which turned into plans for a big mural made up of printed tiles.

Unfortunately time and snow got the better of us and the project hasn’t been realised but we did get as far as collagraphs and monoprints. Being new- louise was being quite ambitious with each group she had.

year 9 were studying textiles and she got them making collagraph plates that i helped with and took small groups to help print the plates- it was slightly caotic, having random size groups of pupils turn up with twenty minutes to print collagraph plates that weren’t finished or stuck down properly. but we managed it.

She also had year 7 looking at leaves, textures and shapes. Which they were monoprinting from and pressing them into clay tiles. the aim was for the tiles to be printed over with coloured slips, and make pots and tiles to contribute to my copper sculpture and possibly a mural. This may still happen one day but it turned out that getting as far as monoprinting and cutting out clay tiles was challenging enough!

i took the pupils in small groups to monoprint the leaves and they had some beautiful results…

ok here goes trying to add everything i’ve had ready to add for ages.

i am starting to mildly panic now the project is nearing the end! can’t believe how fast the time has gone, i do however have a healthy awareness of how much i need to get done and how quickly two months will go, it feels very exciting tho and i’m really pleased with some of the work i’ve been doing.

I am three months into another residency in ysbyty Gwynedd, bangor hospital, working with diaysis patients which is going well but very full on trying to keep up with both projects, hence the massive gaps in time between entries.